Suppression of murine melanoma growth by a vaccine of attenuated Salmonella carrying heat shock protein 70 and Herpes simplex virus-thymidine kinase genes

Abstract

Attenuated Salmonella can invade tumor cells and acts as a eukaryotic expression vector for gene propagation. We constructed a bi-gene, eukaryotic co-expression DNA vaccine of Mycobacterium tuberculosis heat shock protein 70 (mtHSP70) and Herpes simplex virus-thymidine kinase (HSV-tk) and used attenuated Salmonella as a vector to treat murine melanoma. In vitro, recombinant Salmonella can carry plasmid stably and can invade into the cytoplasm of B16 tumor cells expressing the protein of the mtHSP70/HSV-tk gene by Western blot assay. In vivo, after the recombinant Salmonella was injected into tumors, the HSV-tk precursor drug ganciclovir (GCV) was administered to start the HSV-tk killing of tumor cells. We found that the mtHSP70/HSV-tk recombinant bacteria can raise CD8+ T lymphocytes in peripheral blood by flow cytometry and in tumor tissues by immunofluorescence detection, increase IFN‑γ contents in tumor tissue by ELISA and significantly suppress tumor growth.